Only Human
by Mayonaka Yoreki
Summary: In the end, she could only take so much without breaking. In the end, she was only human. *Huge rewrite of A Fresh Start. Izaya/ Kagome COWRITER WANTED!


**Prologue**

"_You will never know true happiness until you have truly loved, and you will never understand what pain really is until you have lost it."_

It had to end at some point; she'd always known it would come, but throughout their journey, Kagome held onto the hope that it could end happily for the group of shard hunters, that they would all survive and get the happily-ever-after they deserved. It had been a foolish dream. In the end, Kagome was left all alone on a bloody battlefield, surrounded by the bodies of both her friends and her enemies, and all she had to show for everything they had all given up was the Shikon no Tama, a burden she never wanted. Kagome didn't know how long she stood there clutching the jewel and the small piece of fabric that'd been ripped from Inuyasha's fire-rat kimono in the battle, staring numbly out over the dead, lifeless faces of her friends, strewn among the bodies of their enemies. For a brief moment, like the calm before the storm, Kagome cried no tears, shed no grief for her dead friends. Then, she made the wish, and suddenly, there was a bright light and everything was changing and she was going home to a life she no longer wanted.

When Kagome opened her eyes to find herself fifteen again, lying in the bottom of the well as if she'd fallen in, with her brother watching her from the top and asking if she was okay, she snapped. She grieved openly then, for the feudal era, for the way it had all ended, for the friends who would never remember the girl they never met (whether they survived the five hundred years, or not), but most of all, she cried for the jewel that should no longer exist, the one she still held clutched tightly in her fist. It was pale pink and powerless now, nothing more than a pearl the size of a large marble, and she could no longer sense anything unusual from it, but it was still there and it was proof that she hadn't been dreaming. It didn't matter that she was the only one who remembered those days, that not even the scars remained upon her to prove that it had happened. The powerless Shikon no Tama was proof enough for Kagome that she had done the right thing, no matter how much it broke her heart to do so.

She spent weeks mourning the friends she'd seen die, and the knowledge that she'd given them all another chance at happy lives with her wish was the only thing to pull her out of the spiraling depression she was beginning to sink into. Her family didn't understand the truth of what was really bothering her, but they tried to, although Kagome was still grieving too much to even think about what to tell them. At first, they thought she was going through some kind of trauma from falling in the well, but they realized soon enough how stupid that notion was. She'd gotten nothing from that incident other than a bit of dirt on her school uniform and a pulled muscle on her leg. Eventually, Kagome managed to pull herself out of it, and her family gave up on ever knowing what had really been wrong with her. It was still hard for her over the years, and she still got sad when she thought of them, but she dealt with it by writing of her adventures in the feudal era and of them.

She'd had to change a lot of details, despite that no one remembered but her, and by the time she graduated from high school, she had an entire series of novels ready to be published. It made her happy to talk about her friends, to show people just how wonderful they were, to let them know all that had been given up in the end so that their world could be a better, safer place to live. It didn't matter that no one knew most of it was true, or that she'd had to give her story the happily-ever-after ending she never got to have because in a weird sort of way, writing about them was like therapy for Kagome. It helped her deal and move on and live much easier than she could have, otherwise.

She didn't know what she expected to happen once it was published, but there was a small part of her that hoped one of her old demon friends would remember the truth and come find her. That never happened. Instead, her story grew in popularity, and even though she'd used a pen name, everyone in her part of Tokyo knew she'd written the _Shikon no Tama_ series. Once that got out, things got more hectic than Kagome had ever thought it would. More people came to the shrine than ever before, but usually, it was because they wanted to see her. She got loads of fan mail, both good and bad, and eventually, she had it set up so that it all had to go through her editor's team before coming to her. She was stopped in the streets often, too, by people who knew who she was. By the time she was twenty, all the local fame got to be too much for her, and Kagome decided to move out of the shrine and away from that area of Tokyo. She went to Ikebukuro.

**End Prologue**

Alright, tell me how you like it so far. To clarify some things, Kagome's wish changed the past, made it so that the jewel had never been created. I should get the next chapter updated soon, though I can't promise that for sure. I have quite a few stories I'm supposed to be updating, but I've been getting distracted lately with new ideas that may not ever get uploaded. On another note, this is basically a huge rewrite of A Fresh Start/ Only Human. I'm still not sure if Souta is still going to be living with her in Ikebukuro to go to Raira, but we'll see how that turns out when we get to it.

Kagome is going to keep writing novels about the feudal era, so what I want to know is, what do you think she'll write about? Obviously, it'll all be stuff that was true before her wish, so she won't be making anything up. I just want your opinion on this, if you guys don't mind.


End file.
